Rowland Collection About the Rowland Cards

About the Rowland Cards

Ten boxes of index cards are available at Special Collections, University Library, University of California at Santa Cruz. The cards are arranged in alphabetical order, divided according to surnames of people and subjects. See Card Categories for a complete list of the categories.

Rowland Card File Box

Eight of the boxes are red and contain 3 x 5 inch cards. The remaining two boxes are beige and contain much larger cards (circa 3 x 10 inches). Some images of the cards, including a Pre-Statehood Stamp, can be seen at: Card File Images

Boxes A-1 through A-5 contain 3 x 5 inch index cards with descriptions of people. Box A-6 contains larger cards that also describe people, mostly late in the alphabet from M through Z. Many of the entries on these cards have been crossed out in pencil; presumably, as the information was transferred at a later time to smaller cards in the red boxes. [The transcribers have included the crossed-out information.] Rowland used a standard set of abbreviations on his cards; these can be seen at: Abbreviations

The cards in boxes B-1, B2, and B-3 describe selected subjects, in categories ranging from Banks through Taxes, including such diverse categories as Land Grants, County Roads, Railroads, and Padrónes (a census of people or animals).

Box C, the other box of large cards, includes transcripts of the Pre-Statehood Documents in Spanish. Some have been translated from the Spanish by Leon Rowland, but many of the cards in Box C have not been translated. [Researchers may wish to compare Rowland’s translations with California pre-statehood documents relating to Santa Cruz County, 1790-1850; English translation of Spanish documents by Starr Pait Gurcke. Spec Coll MS105]. Definitions of many Spanish terms on the cards may be found at: Spanish Terms